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Net Neutrality in the US, and what this could mean for you

Net Neutrality was adopted in 2005 in the US in order to preserve and promote the evolving character of the internet as the telecommunications entered the broadband age. Net Neutrality was put into place so that internet services providers would have to treat all data on the internet equally, and not discriminate or charge differently by the user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication.

In June of 2018 a repel of the FCC rule took effect despite the U.S Senate vote to uphold the regulation. This means that all ISP’s in America can content charge the customers.

Although ISP’s in America were not planning to adopt the content charge system, in other countries like Portuguese ISP’s offer smartphone contracts with monthly data limits and sells additional monthly packages for particular data services. So, if you were looking to be on social media then you would be charged a fee to use those apps if you wanted to call or video chat with people then you would pay an additional fee.

After the Net Neutrality repeal was put into effect many American ISP’s such as Comcast, went on the record stating that they will keep their internet services open and free to its users. However, this also means that other companies can still charge for different services if they want, the consumer wouldn’t be protected.

Many people would say that Net Neutrality law was never needed since it hasn’t been an issue before in the US so why would it need to be in place? It was done because ISP’s would have the potential to adapt to start charging for specific parts of the internet in America. Streaming, social media, and communications via the internet would have a price tag to use them.

ISP’s in the US won’t adapt to utilizing content charging because they would want to say in demand in the market. The customers would start looking for alternatives to avoid paying too much for internet services.